450 years without Titian, the first European painter and innovator of landscape art

(by Samantha De Martin)

On a day in late summer 1576,

on the threshold of his nineties and with the plague ravaging the city,

a Titian 'ill with fever' passes away in his

home-studio at Biri Grande in Venice. Death finds him

at the height of his success. Official painter of the Serenissima, he had

travelled the length and breadth of Europe. Court master to

princes and rulers, he had renewed European painting

by navigating a variety of themes and works, from the state portrait

to religious and pastoral-pagan scenes. His fame

would be such as to break down even the restrictions imposed

by the health emergency: he is granted a funeral at San

Marco and burial in the Basilica dei Frari, where in 1852

the cenotaph commissioned by the Emperor of Austria is inaugurated,

designed by Luigi Zandomeneghi and son.

In reality, according to his biographer Tizianello, the master

had ordered on his deathbed "to be buried in the archdiocesan church of his Homeland",

namely Pieve di Cadore, where

today the memory of the painter is entrusted to the fifteenth-century Casa

Natale, freshly restored, or to the 'Madonna and Child between Saints

Titian and Andrew', identified by investigations and

restorations in 2023 as entirely by Titian's hand.

In that 'Pieve that sits cheerfully among smiling hills and hears the low roar of the Piave',

as Carducci wrote, the community

celebrates under the title 'Titianus Cadorinus 1576–2026' the 450

years since the death of its great painter, with initiatives that

will continue into autumn as well. On 27 August, the day of

his death, Titian will also be commemorated by a temporary philatelic

service with a special postmark issued by Poste Italiane, and

by the debut of "While Venice Dies: Titian's Last Vow.

The Pietà and the Plague of 1576," a staged reading by Matteo

Melchiorre. A few kilometres to the south, the artist's last

unfinished masterpiece, now held at the Gallerie

dell'Accademia in Venice, has been chosen by Marina Abramović

to enter into dialogue with her 'Pietà (with Ulay)'.

Among Titian's innovations, landscape stands out, as

recounted by the exhibition 'Titian and the Landscape', on display until

18 October at the Palazzo della Magnifica Comunità di Cadore,

promoted by the Magnifica Comunità di Cadore and the Fondazione

Centro Studi Tiziano e Cadore with the Municipality of Pieve di Cadore.

Curated by Bernard Aikema and Thomas Dalla Costa, it features 33

pieces, including three paintings and works on paper, which explore

the impact of his landscapes on European artists. Exceptional loans

such as 'The Baptism of Christ' from the Musei Capitolini,

'Orpheus and Eurydice' from the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo and 'Saint

John the Baptist' from the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice

enter into dialogue with drawings and woodcuts by Titian and by others who drew

inspiration from him, from Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Dürer to

Rembrandt, Watteau and Marco Ricci. The Titianesque model of

idyllic landscape would remain a model for European landscape art

until the early nineteenth century. "In painted and paper works,

drawings and prints," explains Bernard Aikema to ANSA, "landscape

plays an important role. 'Titianus cadorinus', as the painter signs himself

in the Ancona Altarpiece of 1520, citing for the first and only time his geographical origins,

also brought about a change in the concept of landscape in painting.

In the Renaissance, landscape played a secondary role. In the preceding generations,

if we think of Giovanni Bellini or Cima da

Conegliano, it was always a kind of backdrop, whereas in Titian

figures and the landscape are integrated". In the first half of the sixteenth century, especially in the Veneto region, the new Titianesque concept of landscape also developed thanks to two collaborators, Giulio and Domenico Campagnola. "However, the evocative rocky landscape of Cadore appears rarely in Titian's works". Rather, in the nineteenth century, Cadore was discovered by English painters such as Josiah Gilbert, who had visited it, enchanted by the 'Titian's country' captured in the watercolours housed at the Casa di Tiziano. Here a small exhibition invites visitors to reread, with the sensibility of a Romantic traveller, the mountain landscape of the Cadore painter.

"Titian can be considered the first great European painter because - Aikema further explains - he was discovered by the great European princes of the era: first the Italians, the Gonzagas, the Estes, and then the great rulers of the world at the time, the kings of France, but above all the Habsburgs with Charles V. The quality and variety of works and themes is enormous: he is the painter of great mythologies, of altarpieces, he is the inventor of the European state portrait. Titian, beyond time, holds an eternal fascination".

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